I've been kind of hesitant to do this cover. The Beatles occupy a space in music history so vast that to criticize the band at all often borders on heresy. But let's ignore the whole "GREATEST BAND EVER" critical fawning for a second and be reasonable here; this cover is fucking awful.

I can't really imagine how an idea this asinine was concocted in the first place. "Let's drape meat and plastic body parts on the Beatles!" sounds like a bad joke, not an actual art project. Even then, using one of said images for an album cover is not only asinine but a huge lapse in judgement. Everyone's favorite mop-topped whatevers covered in meat is not something your average pop fan wants to consider here.

Now some people consider this album cover to be a brilliant method by the Beatles to stick it to the man and make some sort of bold artistic statement. An artistic statement involving meat, I guess. I agree more with George Harrison's take on this whole thing; "I thought it was gross, and I also thought it was stupid. Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naïve and dumb; and that was one of them."

The plastic cow's lifeless eyes plead with you. Its pitiful cries of "moog" fill your ears. The plastic cow is attempting to tell you something. You can sense that it wants you to pull its plug. The plastic cow realizes its existence is horrible and unnatural. It pleads with you to end its so-called life by merely unplugging its cord, end its futile cries of "moog" once and for all.

Now a promotional still from the little-known original concept version of the movie Mannequin. Instead of featuring Kim Catrall as a department store mannequin come to life, however, this version featured an army of blank, soulless mannequins attempting to take over the world like zombies if zombies happened to be made of wood. In this scene, we see an army of them surrounding and about to destroy a pack of hapless hippies on their way to a love-in.

People try to trace exactly where Michael Jackson started to go wrong. Was it his horrible childhood growing up in Gary? The stratospheric fame in the 80s that turned his head all wrong? Personally, I believe that things started to go awry as early as the 70s, when Michael sang a ballad about a rat and was featured on an album cover with a bunch of rats. That's the sort of thing that's likely to mess with anyone's head.

High on the love of Jesus, I'm sure he'd have you believe. But look at that slight edge to his smile, that bizarre glint in his eye. There's something else powering this man's wholesome Christian tunes. Something far more than mere piousness. Something that one day will cause him to snap and go on a murderous rampage in the name of the Lord. But for now, he merely sings. Sings "high."

(image courtesy, once again, of Bizarre Records)

First off, I have to give credit to Si. I didn't think it was possible to break the exclamation points record set by The Reverend Gusta "Day Death Died!!!" Booker. Secondly, AAAAUUUGGGHHH!!! Why is there a giant, disembodied eye staring back at me? And why does it have a really sexy set of legs? Stop trying to confuse me here, Si, I'm already confused enough after that Velvett Fogg cover!

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here? I love Elvis Costello dearly, but I'd really like to know where the hell Costello got the idea that what we'd love to see most on an album cover is his creepy, disembodied head mounted on a wall. I'm not even going to get into his clown makeup applied over his facial hair. Jesus, this is the stuff of nightmares.

No offense, but I'd rather not let your guys' hands within 50 feet of anybody. In fact, I get the sneaking suspicion that these four are responsible for the invention of the restraining order.

Mom and dad sure taught us a lot, you know. They were so important to us as a band, in fact, that once they died, well, I couldn't bear to see them buried. Instead I took them to the local taxidermist. He was a bit hesitant at first, but after I convinced him of how important they were to me, he underwent the procedure and gave them to me. Now they can sit on their favorite chairs forever. I even took a photo of it for the album cover! So, um, when are you going to be letting me out of this mental institution anyway?

I don't know, Jim, something about that thousand-yard stare and sour look on your face make me think you're deluding yourself. You want to come across as being sexy, I'm sure, but you can't bring yourself to go that extra mile, can you Jim? You simply can't reconcile your desires with what you already know of your sad, horrible little life, can you? Let's face it, Jim, you want to die. You don't love anything.

For this cover, we see Jerry in megalomaniac mode. His steely gaze over the earth (which suspiciously looks like a cheap globe) seems quite unsettling, as if he is placing himself at the level of God and is using his vantage point to condemn us all. In this case, his question would be merely rhetorical; our fates are already sealed, and only he knows when its time shall pass.

AUUUGGGH GET IT AWAY FROM ME IT'S STARING INTO MY SOUL IT WANTS TO EAT ME ALIVE HEEELLLPPP

Actually what really makes this is Dean's bemused expression. "Huh, would you look at that. This doll just started puking up pea soup all over the place and calling my mother a whore. I must be having a really bad case of the DTs again."

I'm pretty sure that anything that would result in you being fused together with your fellow bandmates into a gigantic lumbering monster would be less a miracle and more a horrendous nightmare.

( The pie is not entirely what it seems )

This cover looks innocent enough at first, if extremely creepy, but sharp eyes will notice that the apple pie, aside from not looking anything at all like an apple pie, has a clearly defined labia/clitoris. Why the hell a pie would have either of those things is anybody's guess, but it makes me wonder if the people behind the American Pie movies knew about this album cover.

The 50s were a bad era to be a homosexual, so I know that there had to be some subtlety put into things to effectively write about or depict homosexuality without being labeled yourself and thus having your life ruined. This album cover seems to fail on almost every count. Aside from the blatantly obvious name and its implication of gay swingers having a good time, we see the gigantic phallic imagery of the clarinet and its jolly player, the fact that the clarinet player is straddling the sawhorse in such a way as to make his crotch extremely obvious, and the guy in the foreground creepily fantasizing about the whole thing. I don't know what the significance of the ladder is, though. I think it's just a ladder.

Since I'm really tired tonight and am finding it really hard to come up with good jokes to make fun of album covers with, I deferred the mockery of this one to my good friend Jeff. This is what he had to say about it:

"Well the stripes on her shirt certainly make for an interesting optical illusion, until you realize that she's actually wearing those stripes seriously. Then it just becomes ugly."

"Uhm, Celine? The baby's dead, Celine, you can stop cradling it now. No, holding it like that won't make it come back. Celine? I know it's very sad, but you have to just let go. Celene? Celene?"

And by "let's have a party" I mean "let's all awkwardly stand around the living room and pray for death."

I really wish I could make fun of this album cover effectively, but to be quite honest it hurts my eyes to look at it for any extended period of time. The combination of the color and the blown-up blurry picture is just doing a number on my eyes and it sucks.

This album cover features a rare promotional still from the cult late 50s horror film "Attack of the Stuffed Rabbits." Here, we see the film's lead, Richard Towalski, moments before the final showdown where the stuffed rabbits attempt to tear him limb-from-limb. A must see for all fans of b-movie horror!